Comments

This is not a single case. There’s another quite similar in Brazil (with a little girl) and there are some videos in youtube as well.
These videos were used here in Spain sometime ago as a demonstration of child abuse by religious fanatics.
Shame on their parents!

At least his age excuses him for having only a Grade 2 education in science…if he takes Grade 3, however, I’m sure that the Answers in Genesis people will reject him as a part of that snobby “academic elite”…

It’s the hall packed with cheering adults that sickens me. So unthinking. So devoid of reason and the capacity for rational thought. So convinced that their ignorance is a cause for celebration. Such a waste.

I agree with you there Brownian. I am forced to assume that whoever actually wrote the speech understands it, or at least is good a picking suitable words out of the dictionary. The audience however? Hmnn…

I hate to make fun of a little kid, but watch the video with the sound off. The antics of this kid when he is shouting I am not a monkey….I am reminded of The Simpson’s episode parodying a creation-evolution trial and Homer’s antics trying to open a recalcitrant beer.

*sigh* So much confusion. Don’t these people even read their own book?
Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis are two completely different and contradictory creation myths.
In Chapter 1 mankind is made in God’s image as the final piece of creation.
In Chapter 2 Adam is made from mud (and not necessarily in God’s image) before the plants and the rest of the animals (with Eve being the final piece of creation).
However, the fundies regularly confuse the two stories or choose whichever best suits their needs at the time.
Ben Stein has shown distain for the idea that Man is just “lucky mud”. But Chapter 2 says that Man is just that.
They say that man was made in the image of the Gods (in Chapter 1 “Let’s make him in our image, our likeness”) but that is arguably contradicted in Chapter 2.
I’m so confused…

10 days ago BBC Radio 4 aired a documentary about 3 of your very own child evangelists – Torey Fountain, Jared Sawyer and Akiane Kramarik.
I’ve obviously lead a real ivory tower existence as this was my first exposure to this horror.
This is child indoctrination on a par with the Muslim fundamentalist schools.
Do we expect these little (Christian) soldiers to fight the god (sic) fight equally as fervently? Or is this just another manifestation of the lunatic fringe?

A quick note: I’m glad you are taking this on. Scientists like my husband just like to do science, and many other scientists are the same. They tend to be independent and don’t care much what ignorant people think about them and what they do. To them it is self evident that science is fun and useful and occasionally thrilling. People of the touchy-feely sort may be repelled by what they think is the cold and heartless scientific mind. This is due to lack of exposure to science. And as Freud pointed out, we have such a long period of dependency in our infancy and childhood that we continue to look for security in the form of a higher power who will protect us. Scientific facts may seem chilling to those who can’t sense the wonder of it all.
I am now involving myself with outreach; I’m a retired teacher with a strong amateur interest in science.

I can’t find at the RAE “zardillente”, “sardillente”, “zardiente” or “sardiente”. Is that a Biblical term that’s been dropped from the language? Or is the kid mangling words he doesn’t understand? I’ve never read the Bible in Spanish, so I’m guessing here – it probably is translated to a Spanish as absurd as the English version.

The Book of Job chronicles a bet bet between Yahweh and Lucifer. Since a bet is pointless if the outcome is known to both parties, this proves that Yaweh is not omnipotent.

No, actually it chronicles a bet/argument between Yahweh and *Satan*. Satan (Hebrew for “the adversary”, often read as God’s prosecuting attorney) is a distinct entity from Lucifer (the fallen prince of dawn of Isaiah 14:12). Only in Xian thought were Satan and Lucifer (and diabolos, and the leviathan, and the serpen of Genesis, etc) conflated into one entity representing the antithesis of God.

This has some hilarious consequences for Xian attempts to interpret the Book of Job…really…appropriating an entity from another religion to suit your own purposes is one thing, but then trying to go and apply your redefinition of that entity to the version found in the original texts is absolutely ridiculous. If mainstream Xians only knew the history and context of their own scripture, they’d have a lot less difficulty with this one….

At my Anglican school we were taught that “made in God’s image” meant we, like God, have an innate knowledge of right and wrong, not any physical similarity. If true, this would mean atheists know right from wrong too.

No, I don’t know how this was reconciled with the story of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

However, even taking the story of Job in its own context does not bode well for God. It tells of God being tempted by Satan into a bet, whereas elsewhere in the Bible it proclaims God cannot be tempted; temptation is a fault of men. It is a very despicable story on many, many levels. Its blatant contradiction of other passages is probably the least of those levels.

This is revolting — same as the Baby Bible Bashers documentary. I just don’t understand how adults can think that brainwashing children is OK: I’ve seen kids parroting secular/atheist ideas too and I find it every bit as repugnant. The adults involved in this obviously have a very different sense of morality (as regards indoctrinating children) to mine. Notwithstanding their claims of superior morals, I’m pretty sure my “atheist morality” in this respect is a helluva lot better than theirs.

Etha, you are as erudite as always, but you’re missing the point: the Book of Job chronicles the world’s first documented Stanford Prison/Milgram-type psychology experiment.

Though widely recounted anecdotally, like the Stanford experiment, the results from the work God and Satan’s with subject J. are non-significant and otherwise inconclusive due to a lack of replication. (God, Satan, et al. ~600-500 BCE). Further rumours of academic impropriety including inclusion of Sumerian data without attribution will not be discussed here.

Nonetheless, the book remains a seminal work in the field of psychology, and at the least suggests there is much to be done to examine the role of privilege/disavantage in determining levels of faith. Further, the existence of an ideal test group in the God-fearing republican elite practically demands the attention of actively researching social psychologists.

I wonder if this kid knows he’s a freak show. Up there, ranting and raving in a tone I can only describe as (Godwin help me) Hitlerian, talking about things he hasn’t been in school long enough to understand… I hear kids like this and feel sorry for them, playing at being adults either because they’re forced to be or (even worse) because they try to be, because they think it makes them feel better about themselves.

Though not to the extent of this kid, I was one of the latter. I raised a few hackles, and one neighborhood grandmother came to outright hate me because she thought I was a snotty little prick, but I was an outsider in school and had very little shot at a normal childhood anyway. I’d love to be able to meet myself a quarter century ago and explain a few things… and I see this kid and wish I could do the same.

Not so much the lunatic fringe, I think, as the natural consequence of the common belief that “knowledge of God” is instilled through The Holy Spirit. Religious enthusiasts are very invested in the idea that there is a mysterious kind of faith that has direct access to truth — and this faith is not gained through reason, or education, or experience. You’re born into the world having it — and the world then does it best to knock it out of you.

Thus, this love affair with the ideal of the uncorrupted child — who, like in the poem by Wordsworth, is born “trailing clouds of glory” and still REMEMBERS GOD. The people in the audience are watching this strange, trained, precocious little boy and they actually interpret his antics as unrehearsed, spontaneous eruptions of the pure kind of faith they want to return to.

This is a popular theme in America — that children are in many ways wiser than we are. They are not self-conscious and proud, so the Holy Spirit is closer to them, and speaks through them. “Except ye become as a little child, you may not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The child Jesus confounds the elders in the temple.

You don’t need no fancy book-larnin’. Looka this kid. Smarter than scientists, he is. All you have to do is trust God, just like a baby.

They view this sort of thing as a powerful argument that they’re right. How could an atheist account for this marvel? It’s a visible manifestation of their romance going on in their heads.

Twyman – a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs – staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation’s Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer.

Yes, it’s come to that.

“God is the only one we can turn to at this point,” said Twyman, 59. “Our leaders don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring.””

At my Anglican school we were taught that “made in God’s image” meant we, like God, have an innate knowledge of right and wrong, not any physical similarity. If true, this would mean atheists know right from wrong too.
No, I don’t know how this was reconciled with the story of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Yes, because it was the tree of “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”, not just “knowledge” in general. So I do wonder how they reconcile that with man being created with an innate knowledge of right and wrong.

As for atheists, anyone who believes the story of the Garden and Man’s fall, should believe that all men received the knowledge of good and evil. Atheism is a seperate choice to not believe in God. What I’m trying to say is that your statement “if true even atheist know right from wrong”, doesn’t depend on the meaning of “in god’s image” since in any case all men received that knowledge from adam’s eating of the fruit.

This looks depressingly like footage from a sequel to The Boys From Brazil. Soon, his evil makers will teach him German…

One of the things I noticed was that the boy did not believe in the Stork Theory of reproduction, when he is clearly of an age to be told that by his parents. His theory is that “God made him in his mother’s tummy.” Which means:

A) He thinks his dad is God

B) He thinks God is his dad, i.e. he’s the next Jesus Christ

or

C) He has been taught a basic version of “the facts of life,” i.e., about sex.

Now, these are the sort of people who invent the Stork Theory and the Cabbage Patch Theory as a way to fend off “Mommy, where do babies come from?” without having to tell their small children the naughty, sinful facts about sexual reproduction (aka, the system God “intelligently designed”–which he also finds repugnant and “sinful”).

As I recall from watching as much of “Baby Bible Bashers” as I could stand before clicking away, there’s a clip of this boy, or another one of comparable young age, railing against the wickedness of homosexuality. Wouldn’t his parents have to *teach* him what homosexuality *is* before they can whip him up to fervor against it?

Wouldn’t that, even to a fundie, qualify as child abuse? I remember fundamentalists being angered by books like Heather Has Two Mommies for that very reason–they taught young children about homosexuality. Or is it alright to teach little kids about homosexuality, as long as you also program the kids to preach against it?

What’s most frightening about this is that it isn’t just some isolated example, like the Phelps clan programming their kids to hold up “God Hates Fags” signs. In the video, there’s a lare community of people cheering it on, obviously just as brainwashed as the child. It’s like a real-life Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I wonder what the reactions would be (on both “sides” of the theism/atheism divide) if it was a video of a little boy or girl giving a lecture on theoretical physics or cephalopods?

My thoughts on seeing the video (yes, I’m bad) were that this kid was protesting too much that he didn’t come from monkeys. He started looking more and more like a monkey to me, jumping around and beating his chest (guess that would be a guerrilla, but whatever).

In regards to your question on adopting this rhetorical style…by all means!! I can see it now…you…pacing back and forth furiously…dropping to one knee…punching the air to emphasize a point…the growing glow in your students faces as their minds fill with knowledge…truth…until they can’t contain themselves…YES!!…they stand…they applaud…they turn their faces to the heavens…they hold up their hands…but you…you are relentless…ARISE CEPHALOPHILES!!!!

Two things though…you’ll have to learn to speak in all caps and…I always pictured you as a bit taller.

Man is not from NOTHING! God created us from DUST, and don’t you forget it!

How is it that “made from dust” is somehow way more meaningful than (to choose the current Expelled whipping boy) “on the backs of crystals” or any “in the primordial stew” or whatever origin of life theory is currently the frontrunner.

Growing up in the church, it was always emphasized how weak and useless and pathetic humans were, how we were from dust, and we were sinners, and we were imperfect… then as soon as someone mentions we share common descent, its a big 180 to “were so special, were perfect, were gods favourites”…

Ha! Praying to God for cheap Petrol. Two problems there. Firstly, the obvious. Prayer! Even if you assume it’ll work, wouldn’t praying for something more appropriate be better?
Secondly, though this may not be apparent to the Americans out there, you kind of do have cheap petrol. Or gas, whichever. Try $16 a gallon. Thats roughly what we’re on here at the moment.

That can’t be the phrase – it doesn’t make any sense to describe Adam after the creation as “ardiente” – the English translation is “living being.” If the kid has the Spanish version right, one of those translations is terribly wrong.

He also clearly pronounces “sardiente” and not “ardiente” – actually, he clearly says “sardillente” and neither of those, but I’m willing to give poetic license for the latter pronunciation.

I am a Western Martial Arts enthusiast (the medieval/renaissance swordsmanship revival, for those unfamiliar), and in order to avoid any glamorous illusions about exactly what a sword is for, as well as to bear witness to atrocities that civilization ignores at our peril, I occasionally seek out online footage of beheadings by Islamofascists, African machete genocides, etc. It angers and depresses me, but I can sit through it. I did not, however, have the stomach to watch the entirety of this video. Seeing a life cut down by fanaticism and tribalism is one thing, but kids like this little preacher boy or the larval Baptalibanists in Jesus Camp are stuck in a kind of living death, doomed to stumble around a bleak, terrifying landscape painted on the living world by their parents and pastors. Nothing else in the world is so abhorrent to me. These kids are why we atheists are the ones on the side of the angels.

When I told my 8 year-old son that there were people who thought the world was only 6000 or 10000 years old he laughed and asked how people could be so stupid and not understand fossils. Yeah, he was probably parroting me like the preacher kid was parroting but I was SO PROUD anyway!

I wonder if my biology teacher abused me by showing me Richard Dawkins videos back when I was in school.

Among the misleading things Dawkins said was that there was no controversy about evolution. Actually, that was an outright propagandistic lie. Still, he did manage to mess with my mind for some years of my life. Dawkins has almost as much talent as that kid in the video.

Among the misleading things Dawkins said was that there was no controversy about evolution. Actually, that was an outright propagandistic lie.

That rather depends on what you mean by controversy. When discussing a scientific theory, it’s reasonable to suppose that one might be referring to a scientific controversy. There certainly isn’t one surrounding evolution, whatever the DI might dream about.

Oh go away Richard Kilbore. There is no controversy among people who know what f&$% they are talking about. Only people un-versed in science, and coincidently versed in being a batsh*t crazy fundamental Christian share your views.

This is absolutely chilling. My impression was of a pint-sized Adolf Hitler: his shrieking style and mannerisms were uncanny and frankly frightening. His parents and that ignorant crowd of sychophants have a lot to answer for.

Thank you – that must be it. The kid took poetic license since he didn’t know what a “ser viviente” was but was just mouthing sounds (my father used to have a version of “how much is that doggy in the window” when he was a child, where he converted the song into Spanish puns since he didn’t speak English).

#98: Ha! Actually, that “oratorial style” is pretty much the one preferred by all Latin American despots and shady, demagogue politicians. I swear he reminds me of at least half a dozen Mexican politicians waxing poetic about the devil Gringos.

It’s a show biz gig; it’s about money; and his parents are no worse than any other stage parents. Did you ever watch the earliest films of Shirley Temple? Sammy Davis, Jr.? This kid may very well grow up to be some kind of huckster, but not necessarily a religious one, or he may end up in show business.

The kid is Peruvian (http://www.cristoesturuta.cl/notasprimicias/Entrevistas/NezarethCastirey.asp). No wonder his Spanish sounded so elegant . He is a very vivacious boy , and it really saddens me to think his life is gonna be wasted in stupid superstitions. I can somehow relate, because when I was a kid I used to attend this kind of evangelical meetings (these things are HUGE here in Latin America, sigh) and for the people who go (that include 99% of my family) it is only about “Dios” and nothing more. Geez ,I remember the little acts we played in Christmas : ” Cold and rational Scientist/Philosopher gets to know God through his humble maid and finally understand the meaning of life” . .

I have a niece and two cousins that go to Sunday School, Church, etc. and I worry about it – it seems at such a young age they can be indoctrinated – trained to be so by adults no doubt – just yesterday I was taken aback when my nine year old cousin said he “hated” Obama because he was a Muslim and didn’t believe in Jesus – when I told him that I actually liked Obama and that he clearly WASN’T Muslim and that the a lot of people were uncomfortable w/ him just because he’s a black man he gave me a sheepish grin…

Smart, no. Talented, yes. Chances are Tom Cruise could’ve done this at the same age.

I found the video alternately horrifying and depressing. Zero entertainment value.

The crowd oblivious to the fact that what they’re watching is a circus act, not a sermon. When you see this sort of human gullibility on display, makes you think it’s no wonder so many folks still believe in Creation, Noah’s ark, angels, demons, heaven, hell, etc, but it’s also no wonder Bush was able to get reelected, people thought Iraq attacked us on 9/11, people still justify the invasion of Iraq, etc.

I’m surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned the similarities between this and child “beauty pageants” etc. Forcing children to eat poorly, skip school and parade themselves around like that at such a young age is utterly disgusting – and it’s a very similar thing that’s going on here. This child is being forced to do something which he may decide (when he’s old enough) was completely wrong.

I hope this child does learn just how wrong that load of claptrap was; unfortunately, he’ll likely end up staying trapped in that part of society in which he will not learn the truth about such matters. Even if he does learn the truth, I would feel sorry for him when he does, as he then has to live with the knowledge that he did that sort of thing when he was younger.

Only when watching something like this do I fully comprehend how fortunate I am to have grown up in an environment in which I was not told to believe in a specific religious or political dogma, but was instead allowed to develop my reason and critical thinking skills.

Who knows what sort of a person I’d be if I’d grown up in this kid’s environment? At best, it would be a very unhappy childhood; at worst, I would live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance and spew hatred at humanity. It’s really quite terrifying.

I saw this Channel4 (UK) documentary on Nick Gisburne’s excellent site a while back: Baby Bible Bashers. It follows the stories of three child preachers, two from the Southern United States and one from Brazil. It’s simultaneously interesting and unsettling to watch these kids, particularly at the times when it seems like they’re trying to win their parents’ approval.

It’s exactly this kind of lunatic that will turn into the 2030 version of Jim Jones, or worse. Someone tell me why we’re not dropping “MOABs” on stadiums like this, when one well-placed drop would eliminate so much pain? I hate to be glib about this, but when I see this gang of barely-contained nutjobs, all I can hear is Robot yelling “Danger! Danger!”

The rhetorical style is familiar, but more of Chavez or Castro than Hitler. Although Shickelgruber could get to moving when he worked himself up to it.
I remember Marjoe Gortner’s coming out against televangelists, and applauding loudly when he did so.

Scary what a well-trained and motivated witch-doctor can do, isn’t it ?

On a side note, any of you out there see the recent Law & Order episode in which the detectives arrest a teenage boy for stoning his mother to death ?
The scene with the little kids in Jesus Camp, learning how to chant hate — “This Means War!” Don’t tell yourself it’s only a TV show . . . there are such groups extant today.
I wonder, will they also make war on the unbelievers, or just the Islamics ? I’d like to say I am not worried about religious fanatics, but I’d be lying.
I use the word fanatics because they aren’t fundamentalists, having long since departed from the fundamentals laid down by Jesus or Mohammad or whoever their original witch-doctor in chief was.

Dr. Avalos beat me to it, because that was what knocked me out of my chair when I first heard him speak about his childhood; sometimes being pushed so far to one side makes it eventually flip you around to the other.

As for the little preacher in the video, all I kept wondering was how do you say “He wants you too, Malachi” in Spanish…

Once again I arrive late to the party.
Beyond depressing. The joy and rapture of the adults watching this mini Falwell just makes me ill. I try to confront ignorance, I try to educate where I can but how do you get to these people? Anything you could say is automatically demonic and nonsense out of the gate.
Anybody know of a good country to emigrate to? I am seriously considering it. The stupid is just too much to deal with. I don’t know how PZ and others can do this in this environment, I really don’t.
As for the kid, he will reach puberty someday and then lets see how he deals with a crowd. With acne, breaking voice, pocket erections as he sees the choir girls. Sad thing is that he has probably reached his evangelical and theatrical peak, and he doesn’t even know it.

That had the same effect on me as the CH4 and beeb pieces on child preachers, vomit inducing. However, as others have noted, the child wasn’t the worst thing about it, after all, you can only feel sorry for a child of that age who generally only wants to please the adults. No, what was truly sickening was the audience reaction, now that was frightening.

SteveM wrote in comment #53:
“At my Anglican school we were taught that “made in God’s image” meant we, like God, have an innate knowledge of right and wrong, not any physical similarity. If true, this would mean atheists know right from wrong too.
No, I don’t know how this was reconciled with the story of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

It irritastes me enormously when Christians claim that this is the meaning of this passage. What the Bible actually says is,

“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness… God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them male and female he created them”

Now, what does the word ‘likeness’ mean? Let’s take a look at the dictionary definition of the word shall we?

The author of this text was obviously polytheistic, and assumed that the gods looked just like human men and women. If ever there was a text in a ‘holy book’ which indicates that people create gods in their own image, then this is it.
The breathtaking dishonsty of Christians when quote-mining these verses in an attempt to weasle out of the obvious implications, makes my blood boil.
These religious sycophants can’t even bring themselves to be honest with what their own ‘holy book’ is clearly telling them.

If Hector Avalos happens to read this, I would appreciate his opinion as to whether he agrees with my interpretation.

The site is currently under maintenance. New comments have been disabled during this time, please check back soon.